Qualcomm plans to phone it in on cellular repairs

SAN FRANCISCO--Routine maintenance work on hundreds of millions of cell phones in the Americas, China and Korea usually involves a trip to the store.

But that's going to change by the middle of next year, when carriers will send needed fixes over the air without a subscriber even knowing, says a source at Qualcomm, whose CDMA cell phone technology dominates in these markets.

To make this possible for CDMA operators, Qualcomm has entered into a development deal with Insignia Solutions, and one other specialist in distributing firmware, software critical to running electronic devices.

To perform a similar upgrade now, cell phones typically must be tethered to a computer, where the new programming is stored. Such intricate work is something most cell phone subscribers can't do, hence the store visit.

The Qualcomm development is a significant step for operators using CDMA, a dominant phone standard in Korea, China and most of North America. Many more carriers using rival standard GSM--which powers 70 percent of the world's cell phone networks--will add the same functionality in the coming weeks, says Peter Bernard, Insignia chief product officer.

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